"I shall Intervene, With Nomad Memory and Intermittent Voice": Resurrecting Collective Memory in Assia Djebar’s Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade («Intervendré, con una memoria nómada y voz intermitente»: la resurrección de la memoria colectiva en El amor, la fantasía de Assia Djebar, «Parlaré, amb una memòria nòmada i una veu intermitent»: la reconstrucció de la memòria col·lectiva a L’Amour, la fantasia d’Assia Djebar, «Parte har dezaket, memoria nomadarekin eta aldizkako ahotsarekin» Talde-memoriaren berpizkundea Assia Djebar-en Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade liburuan)

Lobna

Description

Abstract
In Assia Djebar’s war narratives, it is women’s voices and experiences that are at the centre of narration, in contrast to traditional male-centred narratives of war and conflict. In Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade, there are multiple female protagonists, survivors of independence war, who, through storytelling, present shifting perspectives and a multiplicity of voices that contest monological historical versions. By reassembling the fragments of individual identities, lost and forgotten by history, the writer forges collective identity, focussing on the communal rather than private aspect of memory. The paper highlights the gender-specific nature of war memories
it examines the role of the narrative as a means of countering deficiencies of memory and combating historic amnesia. Centred on the idea that memory constructs identity, the paper investigates the extent to which a gendered memory of war can contribute in shaping collective identity, bearing in mind the interdependence but also the dissonance of orality and texting.
Resumen
En los relatos de guerra de Assia Djebar, son las voces y experiencias femeninas las que ocupan el centro de la narración, a diferencia de los relatos de guerra y conflictos tradicionales, centrados en figuras masculinas. Su obra El amor, la fantasía cuenta con múltiples protagonistas femeninas, supervivientes de la guerra de independencia argelina, quienes presentan, mediante la narración de historias, unos puntos de vista cambiantes y una gran diversidad de voces que ponen en tela de juicio las versiones históricas monológicas. Al recomponer los fragmentos de las identidades individuales perdidas y olvidadas por la historia, la escritora logra forjar una identidad colectiva, centrándose en el aspecto comunitario, en lugar de privado, de la memoria.
El presente trabajo hace hincapié en la naturaleza específica de los recuerdos de guerra desde la perspectiva de género. Asimismo, estudia el papel de la narrativa como medio para hacer frente a las deficiencias de la memoria y combatir la amnesia histórica. Centrado en la idea de que la memoria construye la identidad, este trabajo examina hasta qué punto la memoria de género puede contribuir a la configuración de una identidad colectiva, teniendo en cuenta la interdependencia, así como la disonancia, entre oralidad y escritura.
Resum
En les narracions de guerra d'Assia Djebar la veu i les experiències de les dones són el centre de la narració, en contrast amb les narracions masculines tradicionals centrades en la guerra i els conflictes. A L'Amour, la fantasia hi ha diverses protagonistes femenines, supervivents de la guerra d'independència, que, a través de la narració de relats presenten perspectives canviants i una multiplicitat de veus que desafien les versions històriques monològiques. Mitjançant la unió de fragments de les identitats individuals, perdudes i oblidades per la història, l'escriptora forja la identitat col·lectiva, centrant-se en els aspectes comuns, més que no en els privats, de la memòria. L'article posa en relleu la naturalesa específica de gènere de les memòries de guerra
examina el paper de la narrativa com a mitjà per contrarestar les deficiències de la memòria i per combatre l'amnèsia històrica. Tot centrant-se en la idea que la memòria construeix la identitat, l'article investiga fins a quin punt una memòria de gènere de la guerra pot contribuir a la formació de la identitat col·lectiva, tenint en compte la interdependència, però també la dissonància entre l'oralitat i el text.
Laburpena
Emakumeen ahotsa eta bizipenak dira Assia Djebar-en gerra narratibetako muina, tradizionalki ez bezala, gizonak baitziren gerra narratibetako protagonista. Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade liburuan hainbat emakume protagonista daude. Horiek bizirik irten ziren independentzia gerratik eta euren esperientzia kontatuz, ikuspuntu desberdinak adierazi dituzte, baita bertsio historiko monologikoen aurkako hainbat ahots ere. Idazleak norbanakoen identitate galdu eta ahaztuen zatiak batuz talde identitatea osatzen du eta talde memoria azpimarratzen du norbanakoena azpimarratu beharrean. Artikuluak gerra memorien genero izaera nabarmentzen du. Narratibaren rola aztertzen du, memoriaren gabeziak kontatzeko eta amnesia historikoari aurre egiteko tresna bezala. Ideia nagusia memoriak identitatea osatzen duela dela kontuan hartuz, artikuluak aztertzen du genero gerra memoria batek noraino baldintza dezakeen talde identitatearen osaera, kontuan hartuz ahozkotasunaren eta testualitatearen elkarrekiko dependentzia eta desadostasuna.

Sujets

• Memory
• Collective identity
• Algerian War
• Gender
• Memória
• Género

Informations

• Publié par: erevistas
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 51
• Langue: English

Extrait

#04
«I SHALL INTERVENE, WITH
NOMAD MEMORY AND
INTERMITTENT VOICE»:
RESURRECTING
COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN
ASSIA DJEBAR’S FANTASIA,
AN ALGERIAN CAVALCADE
Lobna Ben Salem
University of Jendouba, Tunisia
Recommended citation || BEN SALEM, Lobna (2011): “«I shall Intervene, With Nomad Memory and Intermittent Voice»: Resurrecting Collective
Memory in Assia Djebar’s Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade” [online article], 452ºF. Electronic journal of theory of literature and comparative literature,
4, 68-80, [Consulted on: dd/mm/aa], < http://www.452f.com/index.php/en/lobna-ben-salem.html >
Ilustration || Marta Guezzi
68Article || Received on: 30/09/2010 | International Advisory Board’s suitability: 10/11/2010 | Published on: 01/2011
License || Creative Commons Attribution Published -Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License 452ºF
Abstract || In Assia Djebar’s war narratives, it is women’s voices and experiences that are at the
centre of narration, in contrast to traditional male-centred narratives of war and confict. In Fantasia,
an Algerian Cavalcade, there are multiple female protagonists, survivors of independence war,
who, through storytelling, present shifting perspectives and a multiplicity of voices that contest
monological historical versions. By reassembling the fragments of individual identities, lost and
forgotten by history, the writer forges collective identity, focussing on the communal rather than
private aspect of memory.
The paper highlights the gender-specifc nature of war memories; it examines the role of the
narrative as a means of countering defciencies of memory and combating historic amnesia.
Centred on the idea that memory constructs identity, the paper investigates the extent to which
a gendered memory of war can contribute in shaping collective identity, bearing in mind the
interdependence but also the dissonance of orality and texting.

Key-words || Memory | Collective identity | Algerian war of independence | Gender.
69«I imagine you, the unknown woman, whose tale has been handed
down by story-tellers... For now I too take my place in the fxed circle of
listeners […] I recreate you, the invisible woman […] I resurrect you […]
that no letter from any French soldier was to describe»
(Djebar, 1985: 189).
0. Introduction
Gendering and warring are cultural formations dialectically
constructed in colonial and postcolonial contexts and are reproduced
in fctional narratives. Assia Djebar, the Algerian woman writer,
allows readers to look at narratives of war and their intersection
with narratives of gender. My title fags up the dynamic exchange
between gender and memory, inaugurating what Lindsey Moore
calls a «feminist archaeology of traces» (Moore, 2008:63), where
voice inspires memory and where women, warriors and survivors of
the struggle for independence, strive to establish their identities as
women but also as active agents of change.
Indeed, the exclusion of women’s histories from male hegemonic
discourses attempts to correct itself in Assia Djebar’s war narratives
as women create a counter script that gives voice to their forgotten
and forbidden histories, empowering them in the process. It is
through storytelling —a practice of indirect ‘‘witnessing’’ to an
alienating history— that Djebar projects female collective memory
of the trauma of war. Storytelling in this instance provides the arena
for a unique occasion for subaltern women to edit the masochistic
archives of Algerian colonial history. In this context, Cooke explains:
Women who choose to write about wars they have lived are defying an
age old silencing code. Their speaking about now and in knowledge of
their transgressions allows us to read back into the gaps and silences of
the War Story. Their stories threaten the privilege assumed proper to the
right to tell the War Story. As the right to tell diffuses among all who may
claim to have had a war experience, however unrecognizable as such
by the standard conventions, the masculine contract between violence,
sexuality, and glory comes undone (Cooke, 1997: 293).
In light of this, I argue that reconciling the female self with history,
whether for the author herself or for the fragmented voices of the
diverse narrators, is essential for their identity formation and should
inevitably include a gendered performativity of memory. So the frst
part of the article traces aspects of gendered remembrance and
forgetfulness; the second part delineates the effects —both positive
and negative— of remembering the body or through the body on
female identity, while the last part muses over whether collective
memory could survive in a foreign tongue, in other words the place
of orality in her literary text.
70
«I shall Intervene, With Nomad Memory and Intermittent Voice»: Resurrecting Collective Memory in Assia Djebar’s - Lobna Ben Salem
452ºF. #04 (2011) 68-80.The urgent need to rewrite history through fction is voiced out by
one female narrator: «Alas! We can’t read or write. We don’t leave
any accounts of what we lived through and all we suffered!» (Djebar,
1985: 184) Put more theoretically:
Literary evidence affrms that during the Revolution, the Algerian
women were not conscious of their opportunities… Consequently,
it is not so surprising that they made no attempt to inscribe into the
war text experiences that may have been transformative. When they
have written, they have done so with little awareness of what military
participation had meant […] The Algerian Revolution came too soon in
the history of Modern Arab women’s discursive activism to serve as a
catalyst for the inscription of feminist issues into the nationalist agenda
[…] The difference between the Algerian and the Lebanese women who
participated in their two wars was that the Algerian women did not have
a feminist context, for example, no indigenous, independent feminist
organization, within which to situate their struggle (Cooke, 1993: 185-
186).
Thematically, the trope of memory in Djebar’s war narratives opens
up a space to write «a collective autobiography of the women of
Algeria» (Hiddleston, 2006: 68), triggering a desire for self-knowledge
that resist what Foucault calls «subjugated knowledges, knowledges
that have been disqualifed as inadequate to their task» (Foucault,
1980: 82). Mehta postulates that «In their role as communal
scribes entrusted with the task of preserving collective memory
from destruction and erasure, these women subscribe to an anti-
war politics of remembering» (Mehta, 2007: 2). In this new politics
of remembering, oral testimonies represent the vehicle through
which memory operates outside and beyond the norms of writing. In
Fantasia, if the war of colonization is retrieved from a documented
history, the war of independence relies on the oral testimony of the
women who took part in the struggle. Already chapter titles, “Voice”,
“Murmurs”, “Clamour”, “Whispers”, “Dialogues” and “Soliloquy”,
emerge from the recesses of silence, that of the mother, daughter,
sister, wife, and even child, to fll the gaps and ditch the holes of the
cracked history in diverse locations as mountains, prisons, “douars”
and poor hamlets.
On the structural level, memory is a unifying trope bringing harmony
to the dissident and fragmented female narratives into a whole. The
narration of memory offers a new style in each chapter; it violates
narrative conventions which keep representation stable —especially
the assumption that a single voice is tied to a specifc character
whose speech and memory are her own. There is a multivocality,
a heteroglossia as Bakhtin would call it (Bakhtin, 1981: 272), that is
structurally refected in the various styles adopted in narration. On
a metalevel, the novel vitiates the expectation that the text can be
seen as the product of a coherent authorial agent as it is the case
with the offcial master narratives. It also testifes to the fact that there
71
«I shall Intervene, With Nomad Memory and Intermittent Voice»: Resurrecting Collective Memory in Assia Djebar’s - Lobna Ben Salem
452ºF. #04 (2011) 68-80.is no single War Story; the standard narrative —and with it the way
we think about and conduct war— are dialogic rather than monologic
(Bakhtin, 1981: 276).
Djebar’s projection of a traumatized discursivity encapsulating the
trauma of loss and mourning of partisan women, her syncretic manner
of representation, her feminist approach to Algerian nationalism,
her complex attitude to language and cultural memory anticipate
the complexity of resurrecting female collective memory. The ethics
of remembering and forgetting intertwine, blurring the boundaries
between the two. Forgetting, as Nietzsche posits, becomes a positive
strategy:
Forgetting is not simply a kind of inertia, as superfcial minds tend to
believe, but rather th